Comment by legitster
2 months ago
DEI is just a loose label for having less discrimination in the workforce. There's nothing that implies exclusion unless you are intentionally bad faithing the meaning.
Imagine the FAA was only attending job fairs in white parts of the country. Then they decide to attend job fairs in more diverse parts of the country. No one would suddenly decide they were prejudiced against white people!
There's a difference between forcing a white person to give up a seat, and letting a black person sit anywhere on the bus. But both of these are being labelled "DEI" in this thread.
Again, nobody is arguing that the FAA didn't shoot themselves in the foot by introducing a dumb assessment that threw out good candidates. But I think there should be nothing scandalous or wrong with the FAA trying to be available to more candidates.
The DEI label has indeed been placed on overtly discriminatory practices. At 3 out of the 4 companies I've worked at carried out explicit discirmination under the banner of DEI. One such DEI policy was reserving a segment engineering headcount for "diverse" candidates. Quite literally forcing white and Asian men to give up their seat.
You're not in the position to unilaterally declare what DEI is and is not. I don't deny that there are plenty of non-discriminatory DEI programs that genuinely do aim to reduce discrimination. I don't think it's a good move to try and deny that DEI encompasses exclusionary and discriminatory practices, when so many people have witnessed exclusionary and discriminatory DEI programs firsthand.
That isn’t what happened though. What happened was they intentionally turned down highly qualified white applicants. It wasn’t like they found new “diverse” applicants — they actively didn’t hire people that were qualified and happened to be white. They weren’t being “available” to more applicants, they became outwardly hostile to white applicants. They didn’t grow the pie, they moved the pie.
Huge difference.
It wasn't just white, it was minority groups excluded too to make room for other minority groups. I believe a Native American that scored 100% on the entrance exam, with significant experience is one of the major plaintiffs.
The problem here is that the notion that "DEI is just a loose label for having less discrimination in the workforce" is always hidden behind by people who want to use it for more forceful discrimination.
It would serve those who truly just want to make sure our society all starts from the same starting line to come up with a new term, one that encompasses meritocracy as the goal along with generous helping hands along the way (training programs, tutoring programs, outside-the-class mentorship opportunities). And to focus on helping lower _class and income_ folks get a leg up, not on including or excluding people by characteristics that are a circumstance of birth (skin color).
> The problem here is that the notion that "DEI is just a loose label for having less discrimination in the workforce" is always hidden behind by people who want to use it for more forceful discrimination.
Nah. The problem is dishonest hucksters who want to broadly label everything, regardless of applicability, as bad in an effort to provide their supporters with an easy “anti-X” bumper sticker.
DEI advocates came up with DEI to do precisely what you suggest - the right wing rebranded it as “everyone hates white men” and “be afraid of black pilots”. Almost like they just did the same thing with “woke” and “CRT” before it.
It’s extremely tiring to have people like you waltz into conversations to complain about terms you’re busily redefining, being used in their original context, because you don’t like what your own redefinitions imply.
> _class and income_
Yes, part of my company’s DEI effort was to ensure that a JD didn’t, for instance, specify a college degree if it wasn’t really needed. Thank you, again, for restating things that are already occurring because you’re not a part of those conversations or are unaware of those conversations.
> DEI advocates came up with DEI to do precisely what you suggest - the right wing rebranded it as “everyone hates white men”
Ironic that you're posting this on a story that shows DEI was applied in exactly the opposite way you're claiming, because certain people passed the AT-SAT at higher rates so they had to be eliminated from consideration before they could even take it.